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GOP to Mitt Romney: You’re so vague

Leading conservatives want Romney to start engaging in a real and specific war of ideas. | Reuters

• Former New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, said Tuesday on MSNBC: “As strongly as I support Governor Romney, we need to be better and sharpen our message more. We need to say something in simple terms, and one of the things I’ve been saying is take a position that a middle class family in Ohio sitting around the table can say, ‘Yes, Governor Romney’s going to do that and I agree with it.’ He has an excellent economic plan, but it’s 57 pages long, with so many points. We need to distill it down to a thing that’s simple to understand and that connects to people. And I think when it happens, the polls are close and we’re going to see that turn around.”

• In a weekend column, conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg branded the 2012 race as “The Campaign of Wrong Ideas vs. No Ideas.” Guess who the no-ideas candidate was. “After running to the right in the primaries and boldly picking Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney bizarrely seems to have retreated to an ideological and even intellectual crouch,” Goldberg wrote. “Though he doesn’t say it explicitly, the tone and tenor of Romney’s convention speech suggested that Obama failed because didn’t have the right resume, not because he has the wrong ideas … Listening to the Romney speech, you’d have no idea he picked a principled, fearless, and brilliant conservative lightning rod as a running mate.”

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This is not a new concern: Before Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate, many of the same conservatives were lamenting the Romney strategy of showing very little leg when it comes to his policy plans, as a way to keep all eyes on Obama. The selection of Ryan, many of these conservatives assumed, meant Romney was prepared to scrap that plan and engage in an authentic, if high-risk, war of ideas. They assumed wrong.

Romney, according to people who have discussed the issue with him, did not pick Ryan because he suddenly changed his mind about the strategic risk of detailing his ideas. Instead, it was personal chemistry first and a belief that Ryan would be instrumental in a governing context second that ultimately sealed the deal. Still, that didn’t keep conservatives from hoping otherwise — and Romney and Ryan from sending mixed signals about their intentions to go all-in on policy debates, especially on restructuring Medicare. Initially, they promised a campaign of bold choices and substance. Since then, the campaign has very much settled into a pre-Ryan mind-set.

Why such reticence to go specific? Top campaign officials have explained it this way: In the modern political and media culture, with every day dominated by one side doing a better job than the other of pouncing on facts or, more often, on plausibly defensible distortions or lies, specificity is merely ammunition for the other guys.

Moreover, the officials believe voters are moved by big ideas — a bad economy or impulse for change. The Romney theory of the case for winning rests on voters turning against Obama because of the economy and then ultimately warming to Romney because they see him as a better-than-even bet to improve it.

In this context, a full-throated engagement on the laurels of injecting private competition into the existing Medicare system or detailing the loopholes to be eliminated to finance broad-based tax reductions for the middle class are a distraction — not a political asset.

It’s not clear the pressure from the leading voices on the right will do anything to change this.

I love how perceptions tries to spin everything negative about his/her messiah Mittwit Romney. The country, well those that can think for themselves have been thinking the same thing, tell us something we don't know Mittwit.

That is what snake oil salesman always try to do. Profit on both side.

Make a stand Mr. BainEconomics! detail you plan for the american people to see and decide.

You might have made million in flipping, flapping, flopping taxes, people life, houses, moneys and businesses in the past...this time, you are facing the American people and they are not going to let you treat them as stupid.

"But we have to (elect Mitt Romney) so you can find out what is in it"

I guess Mitt Romney is channeling Nancy Pelosi... and given his recent flip floppery of repealing the ACA (Obamacare) but keeping only the very popular but economically unfeasible aspects of it (pre existing conditions, same rates for sick and healthy) without the mandate, I am starting to think they are the same person.

After all, has anyone every seen Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney together??

I love how perceptions tries to spin everything negative about his/her messiah Mittwit Romney. The country, well those that can think for themselves have been thinking the same thing, tell us something we don't know Mittwit.

Yeah and I love how the Obama Brown-shirts at Politico continue their assault on Romney and leave your hero alone.........

"Mr. Gregory then began to press Governor Romney on his economic recovery/jobs plan, seeking for greater granularity. I find it fascinating that when Mitt Romney put a 59 point plan together the media was cynical; when he distilled it down to a more simple five point plan, they demanded more specifics. It is clear that the media is lacking in its capacity to understand, or they just have a specific agenda as the PR machine for the sitting President.

The message came through loud and clear from Mitt Romney today, as it was repeated no less than three times - Mitt Romney will not raise taxes on the middle class, nor will he lower the tax contributions of the most wealthy"

lol.............oh really ? Folks you just can't make this stuff up...........................but liberal/progressives can:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows President Obama attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns 45% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate,...

I think we have to live with a fact about the GOP. The party cannot ever tell people, even their supporters, at least the ones that aren't millionaires, what they will actually do if they have the chance. If they did, they would never elect another Republican to national office. They get away with it in some congressional districts - the ones gerrymandered to the point of idiocy. But, not with most Senate races and definitely not for President.

Consequently the GOP must lie, obfuscate and demonize the opponent to elect a President. We get lies about them wanting to preserve Medicare. They can't tell the truth - they want to eliminate it, they always have. They can't tell the truth about lowering taxes for the wealthy - it's not about creating jobs, it's about taking care of their big donors. They can't tell the truth about global warming - they know it's happening, they don't care because any action to save the planet would hurt profits. They can't tell the truth about spending - they are not against spending, they just want to spend on the military and their corporate sponsors. The can't tell the truth about the of government - they don't want a small government, they want a government so big it can police every womb.

To elect a President, Republicans have to lie because no one in their right mind would buy what they are actually selling.

There is just no plausible explanation for a presidential candidate not mentioning the troops he was auditioning to lead as commander in chief, or having accounts in Swiss, Caymans, and Bermuda when he was already running for President for the past 7 years. All while we fought two trillion dollar wars his party started and some gave treasure and their kids lives. And on top of that refusing to release PAST taxes.

They just think there would be enough people to buy that crap as well as the one proposing 20% more tax cuts to himself even after paying only 13% the past years and with the cuts from 2001 having yielded net negative jobs and deficits compared to the 23million jobs and trending surpluses the 8 years before. Wake up America, replace the obstructionist Congress and we'd again be back on the path of repair as we started between 2009 and 2011 before they came back and stalled all progress.